I spent Sunday at my parents’ place (it’s tradition for me to be the one to wrestle with the tangle of Christmas lights, and I still drop by the first weekend every December to light the tree).  The rain didn’t let up once all day, so in between decorating, my neice and I passed the time playing video games or messing around with my tablet.  She asked me how long griffins had been extinct.

'Hardcore' is programming technology that hasn't even been invented yet.

Born in 1815, Ada was the sole legitimate child of the famed poet Lord Byron, though she would never have any sort of relationship with him.  Her mother, determined to purge any sign of dangerous poetical tendencies that the girl may have inherited from her father, was fanatical about her tutoring and ensured that her instruction in mathematics and the sciences began at an early age.  By the age of seventeen, Ada’s talent for mathematics had begun to make an appearance, and her passion for the field would remain with her for the rest of her relatively brief life.  It was around this time that she was introduced to the inventor Charles Babbage, and the two of them corresponded at length over various intellectual topics.  Ada was fascinated by Babbage’s two great works in progress, the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine (an early model of the programmable computer).  Neither Engine would be completed within their lifetimes.

It's a Babbage!

Babbage generally did not write about his own inventions, and he lacked Ada’s ability to adequately express his vision.  He enlisted Ada to produce a translation of Luigi Menabra’s memoir on his Analytical Engine, suggesting that she augment the paper with a set of notes.  The resulting addition was longer than the translation itself, and included a description of an algorithm for use by the Engine to calculate Bernoulli numbers.  This algorithm is credited by some as the world’s first computer program.

There is some disagreement as to how much of the contribution was genuinely Ada’s and what belonged to Babbage, as well as whether the algorithm could correctly be considered the first program written for the Engine.  Nonetheless, there is little doubt about her talents as a mathematician.  And her contributions remain impressive given that they were made in an era when science and mathematics were still considered gentlemanly pursuits (and women were generally discouraged from participating).  Ada was also credited with greater vision than Babbage (who mostly viewed the Engine as a calculator), suggesting that such machines could one day perform far more general functions, and perhaps even create computerized music.

Ada Lovelace Day is all about celebrating women in science, technology and mathematics — swing on over to the website for more.

I was worried I’d miss out on the final launch of Atlantis – I had a company event to leave for at the same time as the scheduled launch yesterday morning, but thankfully the countdown proceeded with only a brief pause at thirty seconds, and then she rocketed skyward for the very last time.  She’ll rendezvous with the ISS to deliver supplies, and then, twelve days after liftoff, she’ll return to Earth for good.  And so will end the Shuttle program.

This isn’t the end of manned spaceflight for NASA, but it’s emotional nonetheless.  For the next several years, they will be dependent on the Russians to bring astronauts into orbit, until private companies such as SpaceX are able to pick up the slack.  And at the same time that the Shuttle program is retired, other important programs are perched precariously on Congress’ chopping block (perhaps most unbelievably the JWST — Hubble’s successor, and currently in its final stages of completion before launch in 2018).

The uncertainty is disheartening.  But fans of space exploration are familiar with facing the unknown.  What will come next?